sg2013 conference

sg2013 conference

Day 1 - Talkshop

After four intense days of innovative and collaborative work the sgTalkshop offers an opportunity for critical reflection on what has been accomplished in the workshop. The first day of the conference, the Talkshop, is an opportunity to share perspectives, open debates, pose questions, challenge orthodoxies and propose new ideas in informal and open discussions between cluster participants, leading practitioners in various fields of expertise and emerging talents in digital design. The series of round table discussions ask why we are turning our attention right now to the topic of uncertainty and what are the corresponding challenges and possibilities for design and construction practices within the built environment.

Session 1 | Constructing data

Data & information, how do we understand and interpret data, how do we actuate on it

The session asks how we can sense—and make sense of—real world data to inform and drive our buildings. Equipped with different technological means and devices, how do we cope with the vast quantity of unstructured input, determine which data are to be captured and which are the different ways that they inform, alter, and enhance the design? What is the mode of habitation of structures of the future? What are the software, hardware and theories and concepts that drive the capturing and infiltration of information in design and construction?

With green strategies overwhelming the context of contemporary design, with information being embedded in urban infrastructures and services, with the economical and political dynamics of contemporary cities changing constantly, the session asks: How do we design for and within the evolving contemporary city and the cities yet to come? How can we cope with relationships within and between global supercities and address the dynamics of our times in a world more densely and instantly connected? Who are the agents that generate change in construction industry and in relation to what kind of opportunities?

From screen to site. From human to robot. From multiple potentials to an actualised form.

How can the systemic relations of the virtual come to the actual? What is the role of computation in architecture and fabrication? What is the role of the architect/ designer and how the design process has shifted by using different computational systems during the design process? Finally, how does robotic fabrication can alter the process and involved partners in construction?

Technology is creating an uncertain future, fundamentally altering and shifting trends, modes of working, interacting with each other, perceiving our environment, formulating our values. How are design-related and construction-related practices positioned in this new reality? What is the new role architects, designers, engineers may acquire?

Day 2 - Symposium

Following this year's challenge, sg2013 Constructing for Uncertainty, invited keynote speakers will showcase major projects that explore the range of ways uncertainty (physical, social, environmental, economic) informs design. This second day of the conference, the Symposium, is a unique opportunity to hear insights into the challenges ahead for the discipline.

Interwoven throughout the day will be reports and highlights from each workshop cluster, giving those in attendance an opportunity to view work created during the previous four days of intensive design and development.

speakers

Tristram Carfrae, Arup Structural Engineer, Arup Board Director

"In my career, I've been fortunate to help design a wonderful collection of award winning buildings, including the National Aquatics Center (Watercube) in Beijing collaborating with some of the world's greatest architects along the way.

I believe that good buildings should consume less materials, energy, time and money while also being beautiful and genuinely useful for society. I also believe in continually examining and challenging the accepted way of doing things in order to come to the best solution."

Michelle Addington, the Hines Professor of Sustainable Architectural Design at Yale University, is an internationally recognised expert on smart materials, advanced technologies, environmental systems and energy. She leads numerous collaborative research projects at Yale including the Intelligent Building Project, the Advanced Lighting Technology Lab, and the Urbanization and Climate Change Initiative.

Sarah Jane Pell is an artist, researcher and commercial diver with a passion for live art, exploration and human movement in space and underwater. She is currently CoChair European Space Agency Topical Team Art & Science; Visiting Researcher, RMIT University Exertion Games Lab & AEGIS Research Cluster; a fully-qualified ADAS Commercial Diver and space-art astronaut hopeful. Dr. Pell is a TED Fellow.

Ben Cerveny is a Data Visualization Designer

Massively Multiparticipant Adaptive Systems - How will we plan, design, use, and reuse space in an era of pervasive social computing? Parametric design tools are already 'sculptures in possibility space'. What happens when architecture and urban infrastructure become dynamically reconfigurable 'services' that are also such sculptures of possibility? How will inhabitants understand and perform these systems together?